Social Media and Open Leadership

Sue Bethanis hosts Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, author of the New York Times bestseller Open Leadership, and co-author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Groundswell, which was named one of the best business books of 2008. Charlene is recognized as one of the foremost experts on social media and technology, and has been named one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company (2010) and one of the most influential women in technology (2009). She holds a degree from Harvard College, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In this episode, Sue and Charlene cover a range of practical topics relevant to leaders at every level of an organization:

• How to develop a personal and organizational social media strategy grounded in business objectives—not platform trends
• The four core ways social media creates value: learn, dialog, support, and innovate
• The “engagement pyramid” and how different employees participate in social media at different levels
• How social technologies are enabling organizations to flatten hierarchies and distribute decision-making more broadly
• What leaders need to do differently to take full advantage of these tools, including more frequent and intentional sharing
• How companies are using internal collaboration platforms to share best practices, drive employee engagement, and connect employees directly with the voice of the customer
• The change management challenges that come with adopting new social tools—and how to lower the barriers
• How to balance digital communication with in-person connection

Charlene offers several useful frameworks and real-world examples that leaders can apply immediately. Her core message: start with your business objectives, not the platform. Before any organization engages with social media, she recommends beginning with listening—understanding what customers, employees, and partners are already saying. From there, leaders can build toward dialog, support, and innovation. She cautions against the common mistake of treating tools like Facebook or Twitter as strategies in themselves, noting that they are channels, not goals. Charlene also addresses the leadership mindset required for openness, arguing that the leaders who struggle most with social technologies are often those who conflate sharing with loss of control—when in fact, credibility and trust, not control, are the true sources of leadership authority. Real-world examples from Cisco, Intuit, and Premier Farnell illustrate how companies of different sizes have used social and collaboration tools to engage employees, scale knowledge sharing, and bring leadership closer to the people they serve.